Hello friends,
This is David.
We can begin today's meditation by finding a sense of comfort in our posture.
Perhaps with the aid of one or two deep breaths,
We find a sense of uprightness on the inhale,
A sense of relaxation on the exhale,
Just settling more and more into right now.
And in today's meditation,
We're going to be working with the phrase,
Keep calmly knowing change.
And so right off the bat,
We can bring in a sense of calmly knowing how we are right now.
Any prominent feelings,
Moods,
Sensations,
Just acknowledging them without needing them to be different,
Mindful,
And to help ourselves land in even more,
You could bring your attention to a very gentle anchor,
Something to help you stay grounded,
Like the sensations of the breath,
The feel of the sit bones on the seat,
The hands on the lap,
The sounds.
Just let yourself land a little more into mindfulness.
From this place of a little more groundedness,
You might note that body sensations are changing.
They get more intense,
Less intense,
They tingle,
Pulse,
Vibrate,
Just noticing how moment to moment body sensations are changing as we drop more into mindful presence.
We also notice that sounds are changing when we slip back into the field of hearing,
Like we're at a symphony of the present moment.
The sounds come and go,
Get louder and softer.
Even if there's only a faint white noise,
That too is changing.
As we drop more into mindful presence,
We notice that thoughts are changing.
The thoughts come in,
Come out,
Linger for a while,
Spill over into another thought,
A little gap,
Another thought,
And through mindfulness,
We just keep calmly knowing change.
The thoughts,
They come and go.
You might experiment with dropping away that gentle anchor and coming into a sense of more spacious awareness,
An open awareness of whatever's happening right now,
And just monitor the experience of change moment by moment by moment.
Sounds,
Sensations,
Thoughts,
Feelings,
Impulses,
The whole gamut changing.
Keep calmly knowing change.
In working with this phrase,
It's not so much an intellectual knowing,
But a mindful,
In-the-moment knowing,
A sense of continuity.
Every time we get distracted,
We come back relaxed,
Calm.
Change is happening,
Not needing to do anything about it or change anything,
But just observing moment by moment by moment.
The great Ajahn Chah once said,
If you know anicca,
Change,
You will let go of things and not grasp onto them.
It's a simple enough quote,
But this captures the essence of our insight meditation practice,
That the more deeply we see just how much things are changing,
The things we grasp onto,
The things we seek for pleasure,
The things we consider to be me or mine,
When we really see with mindfulness how it's all changing,
We drop away some of the hold and come into a greater and greater peace,
Ease in our own being.
Keep calmly knowing change.
♪ Ding ♪
